A Temple Turning 50 Is Hopeful

By ARI L. GOLDMAN

Published: November 13, 1989

Correction Appended

For Congregation Habonim, a Reform Jewish temple on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, these are bittersweet days.

Over the weekend, the congregation marked two anniversaries that are inexorably linked for the largely German-born membership: the temple's 50th anniversary and the 51st anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night many historians say the Holocaust began.

Members, mostly in their 60's, 70's and 80's, also looked on with both hope and fear at the events unfolding in Europe as the Berlin wall symbolically falls and a new sense of nationalism and freedom sweeps through Germany.

Finally, members also looked to the future and found it, too, to be bittersweet. The old have survived and thrived, but the next steps for the congregation are uncertain. 'Poised for Renewal'

''We are poised for renewal and change,'' said the president of the congregation, Carol Kahn Strauss, the child of Holocaust survivors and, at 45 years old, one of the younger members of Habonim. ''The challenge for us today is to keep the same sense of purpose that animated our past, even in the absence of the terrible, tragic bond that propelled and united our founders.''

''If we lose that memory, we lose our meaning,'' she said. ''But if we keep it, we will always have the strength to carry on.''

Habonim, now in a modern building at 44 West 66th Street, was founded on the East Side of Manhattan on Nov. 9, 1939, a year to the day after Kristallnacht, the ''night of broken glass,'' during which synagogues throughout Germany were desecrated, pillaged and set afire. The founders of Habonim were led by Rabbi Hugo Hahn, who fled from Essen, Germany, after his synagogue was ransacked and burned to the ground. 'The Builders'

The name of the new temple itself was intended to give hope for the future. Habonim means ''the builders.''

The German Jewish founders of the temple were the poor cousins of the earlier German Reform Jews who by the end of World War II had established themselves comfortably in American society and founded congregations like Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue.

Egon Mayer, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, who has studied so-called refugee congregations in the United States, said places like Habonim are always in danger of becoming ''hostages of the past.''

''The factors that drew the immigrant congregation together - language, nostalgia, as well as religion -are often the very factors that repell the younger generation that wants to Americanize,'' he said.

The refugee congregations that have survived and thrived, Dr. Mayer said, are those that invite ''the new blood to come in.''

Habonim stands as something of an anomaly on the West Side, a neighborhood that has experienced considerable Jewish ''renewal'' in recent years. While other congregations have been expanding, Habonim has seen its membership plummet from 900 families to 550 as its congregants have aged and few new members have signed up to replace them. Habonim's biggest capital investment this year was to install an elevator to assist its elderly congregants get up half a flight of stairs to the sanctuary.

Just blocks away, congregations representing all Jewish branches have been thriving and expanding with religious and educational programs for Jews, young and old, and social programs for the homeless and people with AIDS. New kosher restaurants dot the neighborhood.

The 50th anniversary year of Habonim marks a turning point for the congregation because Rabbi Bernhard N. Cohn, the rabbi for nearly three decades and the son-in-law of the congregation's founding rabbi, will step down next July.

''We are poised to take off,'' said Mrs. Strauss, the temple's president, who uses words like ''coasting'' and ''stagnating'' to describe the recent state of Habonim. 'Waiting to Be Mined'

''This is a gold mine waiting to be mined,'' she added. ''I'm convinced that within two years this place will be hot.''

Rabbi Cohn, who was born in Bonn 66 years ago, makes no apologies for the membership decline. Given the fact that many refugee congregations have disappeared altogether, he said, ''it is a remarkable achievement that we are as vibrant as we are.''

He never saw his role as that of a builder. ''I am a bridge between the old German congregation that was and the new American congregation that will be,'' he said.

Eighty percent of the members of Habonim are either German refugees or the children of refugees. Their heritage is apparent from the greetings in the 50th anniversary journal from families with names like Hammelbacher, Boettigheimer, Bach, Oppenheimer, Baer, Winkler, Rosengart, Burger, Stoll and Maass.

Rabbi Cohn noted that he spends far more time making hospital visits and conducting funerals than officiating at bar mitzvahs or at weddings. Yet, he added, the congregation has an active Hebrew school for 65 neighborhood youngsters.

Cheryl Seltzer, the chairwoman of the temple's school committee, said Rabbi Cohn has succeeded in balancing the needs of the young and the old at Habonim. Some new members, she said, have been drawn to the congregation by the intimacy of the service, which draws 60 to 80 men and women on a Friday night, and by the warmth of the rabbi. A Love for Children

''Rabbi Cohn is a unique person with a special love for children and a profound intellectual side,'' Mrs. Seltzer said.

Mrs. Strauss, the temple's president, who is also the head of the search committee looking for a new rabbi, said the congregation has no particular interest in engaging a rabbi with German familial roots. But no matter how Americanized Habonim may become, she said, it will always have a connection to the Holocaust, which led to its founding.

Rather than regarding Habonim's history as a handicap in revitalizing the temple, she said, it can be turned into an asset. ''What Jew would not be able to relate to our genesis?''

photo of congregants at Habonim on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (NYT/Don Hogan Charles)

Correction: November 16, 1989, Thursday, Late Edition - Final An article on Monday about the 50th anniversary of Congregation Habonim, a temple on the Upper West Side of Manhattan founded by Reform Jewish emigres from Germany, referred imprecisely to the founding of another Reform congregation, Temple Emanu-El, on Fifth Avenue. It was established in 1845.